Developing proprietary systems in a small company environment

CINF 48

Chandu Nair, chandu@scopeknowledge.com, Scope e-Knowledge, 515 Madison Avenue, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10022
As a remote knowledge services company, Scope fulfills diverse content and data requirements of various clients. Obtaining off-the-shelf, ready to use products catering to Scope's requirements is difficult and not very cost effective either.

Scope has therefore put in place a hybrid software team which comprises an internal and external team of experts to create proprietary systems.

In the knowledge space, Scope believes that achieving 100% automation is unrealistic; therefore, Scope has a philosophy of “assisted automation”. Applications are developed in such a way so that they are scalable, ensure better control and enable constant improvement, Scope follows the approach of continuous development and quantum deployment; applications are continually tweaked but deployment is done in a staged manner when it reaches a critical mass.

AGILE methodology is used in developing software. The software team and project operations team finalize the requirements together. Consequently, the applications developed are user friendly and meet user requirements more precisely.

Case studies will be discussed to illustrate these points.